The Vulcan Disaster

Chapter Nine

It must have been an off night. There was one table left unreserved when I called in. The haughty maitre d’ accepted a bill that a large Hong Kong family could live on for a month. In short, the seat I ended up with was not the one he’d had in mind for me, and some other poor devil wound up sitting behind a column.

That must have been the only bad seat in the house, though. The Baghdad was one of those rather large night clubs that managed, in spite of its size, to maintain an intimate sort of atmosphere. Don’t ask me how they do it; if I knew I’d chuck my present racket and go to work putting architects out of business. The old Show Boat, back in Washington, used to be that kind of joint back in the early sixties. It didn’t matter how many people they packed in there, Charlie Byrd was still sitting right there in your lap playing funky-butt guitar, and the fact made the club world-famous. There’s got to be a secret to it somehow.

I’d started off on scotch that evening saw no reason to change my poison. The maitre d’ and I were good friends by now, though, and he was gracious enough to do me a little favor after my drink had been delivered. He slipped an envelope to the star of the show before she went on. A large bill wrapped around the envelope helped. Then I settled back into the most comfortable position my ribs would allow me and looked around at the crowd.

It was a money sort of place. So much so that I found myself wondering why it was operating in Hong Kong, where the night life runs on the stuffy side as Far Eastern places go. It’d have fit nicely in a weirdo town like Macao, where high-priced mistresses of executives can drop six-figure sums — and that’s in American dollars — at the gaming tables without causing even a minor stir. You can name your own example of extreme conduct and Vegas is the minor leagues beside it But Hong Kong?

Anyhow, the place was, as Fredericks used to put it, Port Out, Starboard Home: Posh. Lush. Expertly art-directed in every detail, with even the lighting — the one place where your average club begins to look cheesy between shows — totally controlled. Soft spots of color here and there. A feeling of space between the tables even when you knew that the place was packed. A feeling of hush when you knew the place was loud. And, from the look of the crowd — old British power, new Chinese money, and lots and lots of both — it was paying off nicely.

I was just thinking of another scotch when I saw her.

She was standing in front of my table, dressed in a floor-length cape that hid absolutely everything but that face. I’d have known her in a moment. The face was not something you’d forget easily, even if it’d changed expressions from the somewhat theatrical smile on the face in the picture to the chill immobility of the delicate mask before me. No, I’ve got that wrong. The face was cold. The eyes were brown, long-lashed, and almond-shaped, and they weren’t cold at all. They were puzzled, vulnerable, hurt...

“Mr. Carter?” The voice was low and musical.

“Yes,” I said. I got up. She stopped me along the way with one lovely tanned hand, sat me back down again gently. There was electricity in that touch. “I...”

“No,” she said. “Please. I have to go on in a moment. The picture. Where did you get it?” Looking down, I could see her two hands now, peeping out of the robe. They held the envelope in which I’d stuffed the photo of her and Meyer and my message: Please. I have to see you about this. Nick Carter.

“Can we talk afterwards?” I said.

“Now.” There was an agitation in those slim fingers that her face failed to betray. “I... I have to know.”

“Ah,” I said. “I think you know the news I have for you. You know it from the fact that I’m here, with the picture. You do, don’t you?” I looked hard into those eyes. They filmed over for a second, then she regained control.

“Y-yes,” she said. “I think I do. Hermann would not have parted with that picture while he was alive.”

“We understand each other,” I said. “I have to talk to you. You may be in grave danger.”

“Yes,” she said. The hands were white-knuckled under their tan. “I... Mr. Carter, I am thinking Can I trust him? Can I...” The eyes bored into mine again. “I mean... you may be one of them...”

“If I am I’m in worse trouble than you seem to be. I killed two of them this evening. That is, if we’re talking about the same people.” Thank God for the funny acoustics, I was thinking. It wouldn’t do to broadcast this conversation. “What’s the matter?” I went on. I touched the back of one of her hands and got that same electric shock again. “Are they after you, too? Have they found out about you, too?”

“I... Mr. Carter, I’m being followed. Someone was behind my cab, all the way here. I’m frightened.”

“Let me do something about that, please.”

“I... oh, if only...” Her hand gripped mine inside the dark sleeve. “Please. Can I trust you?”

I gripped her hand. She’d changed the position of her hand, though, and my grip came down on her in a funny sort of way. It was a kind of variant of the so-called “soul” handshake American blacks borrowed from the Africans. I don’t know why I did it. I hadn’t done that in years.

To my surprise her eyes widened; her mouth opened; her left hand flew to the cape over her heart, pressing it down against her, nicely outlining for me a majestically rounded pair of soft breasts beneath the dark cloth.

And she returned my funny handshake.

And she smiled. And the smile was so much worth waiting for that I wondered what I had done to trigger it. And the soft voice said, “Good, good — now I know. Mr. Carter. Please come to my dressing room immediately after the performance. Please. And thank you, thank you so much.”

She pulled away. I tried to rise again; but she pushed me back gently with that lovely hand. The hand brushed softly against my cheek as she bent low to whisper to me: “Enjoy the show...”

And then she was gone.

The show began by stages. It gave me plenty of time to be confused... and to wonder what the devil she’d meant. “Now I know.” Know what? And from a silly in-joke handshake?

The music came up little by little. And little by little, quiet as the music was, the low murmur of the audience quieted down to let it through. Somehow, the attention of the crowd came, despite all the odds, to focus itself on the strange and unique ambience of the place. Relax and enjoy it, I told myself. I stopped thinking and settled into it.

It was a recording. Of whom I had no idea. And the lights slowly went down, so slowly somebody must have rigged up a mechanical dimmer: no human hand could turn a handle that slowly, that gradually. Dim light... dimmer... a ghostly dusk... darkness...

The bass note went into a crescendo. Not slowly. Quickly. It became deafening. You could barely hear the other sound above it. It approached the pain threshold; throbbed... and then went silent.

It echoed in my head. I’d thought I was relaxed, enjoying things. Now I found my hand gripping the edge of the table like a vise. And, ribs or no, I sat up nice and straight, like everyone else in the place.

The next sound was a single, long, wavering line of music by a single finger picking it out on a synthesizer keyboard. Only in addition to the sound it made there was the bright, cold, laserlike beam of blue light, cutting across the stage. A second line joined it; the Moog had multiple manuals, then. This time a beam of reddish light cut across the stage from another angle, pulsing as the music pulsed, following the vagrant line of the tune its maker played. A third — blinding white, with an icy and compassionless tune to match — joined the two, again from a new angle. I wondered where the lights were coming from...

Then came the real blast of percussion.

The Moog synthesizer can do nearly every sound in the orchestra — except the vibrato of the string section. It can also duplicate anything the rock and roll band can do. And when the lightning-like flashes of pure white light started socking through the rapier-like thrusts of the three colored lights, the decibel count of the synthesizer’s pedal keyboard jacked the odds up, up, and out of sight. The manuals rose to meet it. The room pulsed with an unholy loudness of sound. And the space on the little stage pulsed with it — red, white, blue, and blinding flashes of white. The darkness in between was as violent as the flashes of light had been.

Into this maelstrom of light stepped Tatiana.

She was nude as Eve. More so: her long-limbed, flawless body was totally hairless. The wig was gone; all that remained was a tight cap of short hair, trimmed to just below the ears in a kind of cloche cut. It called attention to the piquant lovliness of her face, as the stark nudity called attention to the unblemished perfection of her golden-tanned body.

Her dance — if you could call it that — was as still and quiet as the music was loud and visceral. Her movements were as measured as the flashes and stabs of light were jagged and unsettling. The effect was to make her naked body as impersonal and sexless as a baby’s — and as compulsively and grossly sexual as that of an animal in heat.

Details? Her body was perfect, that’s all I could say. One only notices a woman’s good points when she has bad ones to compare them with. When she’s perfect, nothing sticks out. The whole woman becomes the part you look at and hunger for. And I hungered. My throat was dry; I was having trouble swallowing. I sat, leaned forward, watching the slow and infinitely sensuous posturing of that bare and beautiful form as it lent its alien silence and peacefulness to the wild abandon of the lights and music to produce a third effect that took off at right angles to the other two.

Then sudden silence. Complete. Deafening.

And sudden darkness. So unwelcome that the former light seemed to hang in the air afterward, unwilling to be extinguished, the way the echoes of the music continued to sound in the total silence.

The lights came up slowly on an empty stage. I shook my head — I wasn’t the only one there doing so — and looked at my watch. When I did, I got a shock: the show had run for thirty minutes. Where had the time gone?

I’d ordered another scotch which had been held up by the club’s rules: no drinks served during the show. I got it now and watched my hand as I drank. It didn’t shake, but I wouldn’t have felt bad if it had. The maitre d’ came in view; I motioned him over.

“You had heard,” I said, “that Mlle. Tatiana had been followed on the way to work today.”

“Yes,” he said. His face was sober and expressionless. “I thought it best to put a guard on her dressing room. He will be expecting you, as the lady will be expecting you. I have, ah, attended to things.”

“Fine,” I said. I can tell when I’m being hustled for a tip. I shook hands with him, planting a bill in his palm in the process. Then I drained the scotch and followed his pointing finger backstage.

The bodyguard was Chinese, and he looked formidable: thick and stocky, with forearms the size of legs of lamb. He knew my face, though, and gave me a microscopic Oriental bow as he stepped aside. I knocked once. The voice, still low and lovely, said, “Come in.”

She was in the black robe again, buttoned up to the neck; as she sat on the low chair before her dressing mirror, only her slim hands and bare feet were visible. Her smile was friendly and appreciative.

“I did what you said,” I croaked out of a suddenly dry throat. “I enjoyed the show.” Brilliant repartee.

“I’m glad,” she said simply, motioning me to sit down. “One does what one has to, to stay alive. Which is, well, why I asked you to come back afterward, Mr. Carter.” The smile looked a little weary. “I make quite a good living here, but I have nothing saved. I have responsibilities. It could all go smash, you understand. I will try to explain as I go along.”

“You mean about the shadow? The guy who was following you?”

“Ah, Mr. Carter. It is not one man. It is several. At first I thought it was one of the Oriental youth gangs. But they are mature men, Mr. Carter. And terrifyingly armed. I...”

“Pardon me,” I said. “Did you say Oriental?”

“Why, yes. Should I have said otherwise?”

“No, no. I just thought... but no. Go on. You tell me.”

“The same men were after Hermann, before he took that last trip to Saigon. I knew something dreadful would happen to him. I knew it. I begged him to get out of the business. I asked him to...”

“Whoa, please. What business? Just for the record. I have to know if your information is the same as mine.”

“You know. Arms. Smuggling arms.”

“Smuggling?”

“Oh, perhaps that’s not the proper word. Hermann was more or less on the up and up. Hermann made, let us say, legitimate deals on arms, buying cheap here and selling dear there and the smuggling was all done here, on the way to Hermann, and there, on the way away from Hermann.”

“But something was going wrong.”

“Yes. There are always people who resent the middle man, and his taking his cut. And I think perhaps it may have been one of these who began having him followed here in Hong Kong as early as a couple of weeks ago.”

“The Orientals?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I don’t think it was Orientals who killed him. I found his body only moments afterward. All the evidence I found points to his having been killed by Middle Easterners.”

Her band went to that gorgeous throat. “Mid... oh, God. Them.”

“Them? You know something about this?”

“Yes. He’d had some disturbing calls...”

“If I’m to help, perhaps I should know. You and Meyer were—”

“Lovers? Ah, Mr. Carter. If dear Hermann had wanted that — if he had been capable of that — I would have given him what he wanted gladly. But he had lost a daughter my age, in the war, and sometimes what a man needs most dearly is not sex, but...”

“I understand. I was being indelicate, I’m afraid.”

“No, no. I understand the need. And I appreciate your trying to help me. You are so kind. I can’t say how much I appreciate this. Really.”

“I had to know. It would tell me, among other things, how much I could expect you to know of his affairs.”

“That may have been rather a lot or it may have been table-scraps of negligible importance. I have no way of knowing. I think Hermann may have been caught, as the Spaniards say, between the hammer and the anvil. He may have, how do you say it...”

“Got in over his head?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s what I think, too. I think he had the idea of competing with some people it doesn’t pay to compete with, and in the course of playing both ends against the middle...”

“Yes,” she said. The tone was hollow, full of memories.

“Look,” I said, “I’ll take you home. Where do you live?”

“Oh, would you? Please? Because I think — no, I know — they’re still out there. And I’ve been so frightened...”

“Out there?” I stood up. There was a window beside her dressing table; I went over to it and pulled the curtains open a crack. The street below was full of cars. “Which car are they in?”

But I didn’t have to ask. Before she told me I knew. It was a black Mercedes, anonymous-looking and powerful — and packed full of tough Oriental faces. Resting. Waiting.